Links - 12th June 2020 (3) (China's 'peaceful' rise)

Kenneth Tan - "China's crackdown on underground religious movements has just entered a whole new level. One province has apparently embarked on a hunt for members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (aka Pastafarianism) lurking on university campuses."

China cuts 'freedom of thought' from top university charters - "Changes to the charter of one of China’s top universities, including dropping the phrase “freedom of thought” and the inclusion of a pledge to follow the Communist party’s leadership, has sparked fierce debate and a rare act of student defiance.The changes to the charter of Fudan University in Shanghai, considered one of China’s more liberal institutions, emerged on Tuesday when the education ministry said it had approved the revisions for three universities.Within hours, the Fudan amendments were trending on Weibo with one hashtag viewed more than a million times... That post, and many similar posts questioning the changes, in particular the removal of “freedom of thought”, were deleted by Wednesday afternoon although the issue was still being discussed in private WeChat groups.Since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China has tightened controls on the internet and various aspects of civil society in a campaign that has seen increased censorship and shrinking space for protests, including on campuses... Some of the commentators on Weibo discussed how the amendments pointed to an expansion of Communist party control, with the revised charter saying that Fudan’s “party committee is the core of the university” and would be responsible for setting its direction and making major decisions.The new charter said the university would “weaponise the minds of teachers and students using Xi Jinping’s socialism ideology with characteristics of China in the new era”.Fudan is ranked 109 globally in the Times Higher Education’s 2020 world university rankings.The two other universities that made changes to their charters were Shaanxi Normal and Nanjing, according to documents published by the Ministry of Education that showed it had approved the changes on 2 December.Their revised charters similarly included references to strengthening the leadership of the Communist party at the universities."

6-Year-Old Finds Note Allegedly From Chinese Prison In Tesco Holiday Card : NPR - "Six-year-old Florence Widdicombe was writing notes on Christmas cards to her school friends in South London when she discovered that one card had already been written on."We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China," it said in English, written in all capital letters. "Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization."It instructed the person who found the message to contact a Mr. Peter Humphrey, a former British journalist who was working as a corporate fraud investigator in China when he was detained in the Shanghai prison for 23 months... "I have since contacted several members of an informal network of ex-prisoners we jokingly refer to as the Qingpu Prison Alumni Association. Some of them confirmed that inmates in the foreign prisoner unit are being forced into mundane manual assembly or packaging tasks."... there has apparently been a major change since he was released from the prison in June 2015. "When I was there, manufacturing labor work was voluntary," he recalled. "Prisoners could do that as a way to earn pennies that they need to buy daily necessities like soap and toothpaste and biscuits. What has happened in the last year or so is that work has become compulsory."... As the BBC notes, the operative word in China's denial is "forced.""China's foreign ministry is likely making that denial in light of article 69 of the country's Prison Law, which stipulates that 'criminals with working capacity must participate in labour,' " explains the broadcaster's China correspondent. "Making Christmas cards — even ones destined to raise money for UK charities — is almost certainly the least worst outcome in China's penal system." A similar SOS note was found in 2014, sent by a worker from a Chinese prison sweatshop."

Plastic pollution off China's coast soars after drive to stop dumping it in rivers - "Environmental groups have previously expressed concern that China, desperate to clean up its own rivers, is dumping increasing amounts of trash in its seas instead."

Schneider: The Strange Case of ‘China’ and Its Top PISA Rankings — How Cherry-Picking Regions to Take Part Skews Its High Scores - "The temptation to look to China for lessons on effective education is built into the PISA rankings. “B-S-J-Z (China)” appears at the very top of all three — reading, math and science — often by a substantial margin. B-S-J-Z stand for Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the four mainland provinces that OECD allows China to “represent” it on PISA. This is in contrast to the norm of countrywide testing... Letting a country select only a few provinces to test violates PISA’s own norms, and the biased results can distort global views of what works in education and undermine PISA’s very credibility. Unfortunately, OECD’s preference for global reach over high quality continues to this day, as is evident in China being allowed to continue cherry-picking the provinces included in PISA.  Here’s what U.S. PISA scores might look like if we could report a select subset of our country’s scores as representing the entire nation. In 2015, Massachusetts opted to administer PISA statewide. Not surprisingly, its students did extremely well. As the Massachusetts state department of education proclaimed on its website: “Massachusetts Students Score Among World Leaders on PISA Reading, Science and Math Tests: State’s Reading Scores at Same Level as World’s Top Nations.”  Now consider the affluent New York City suburb of Scarsdale. It, too, contracted with OECD for a special districtwide assessment. In 2017, its board reported that Scarsdale outperformed “the international competition.” While U.S. performance on PISA is at best mediocre, imagine if we substituted Massachusetts, Minnesota, Scarsdale and, say, Evanston, Illinois — we could call it “M-M-S-E (U.S.)” — for the entire country. We would be right up there with B-S-J-Z (China), Singapore and Estonia, with all attendant bragging rights... Allowing China to handpick a few of its richest provinces as representing the entire country distorts the very purpose of PISA as a comparative test of national education systems. These four Chinese provinces represent only 13 percent of the population. Further, because of the hukou system, school enrollment in these provinces likely represents even a smaller share of junior and secondary education enrollment in China (9 percent). It is possible that the substitution of one province for another was driven by legitimate reasons known to China and to the OECD secretariat, and that this 60-plus-point jump in PISA scores was purely an innocent coincidence. Detailed data on the individual provinces were not released in 2015, and detailed data from 2018 have not been shared with the U.S. or, as far as we know, other OECD countries."

Are The PISA Education Results Rigged? - "If we dig deeper into the sampling, we come across another potential problem with the PISA testing: that the sampling done on mainland China (Beijing, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Shanghai) and other cities was not taken from a wide variety of schools. Rather, the very best schools were chosen and the very best students were cherry-picked from those schools... Almost two-thirds of all Chinese children live in rural areas, where school attendance rates can be as low as 40%. A survey by the China Association for Science and Technology showed only 6.2% of the Chinese people held basic science literacy in 2015."

China passed new law where password will be managed by government - "This “Password Law” contains 5 chapters and 44 articles, which divides passwords into 3 types of management, including core passwords, ordinary passwords, and commercial passwords. The core passwords and ordinary passwords are listed as state secrets, and commercial passwords are not. For confidentiality, these passwords are used by citizens, legal persons and other organizations."

China's Minorities Get Huge Affirmative-Action Benefits - "He will be able to get into one of China's best colleges with merely average grades, win a special scholarship to pay for it, have an easier time getting a job when he graduates and have more than one child after he gets married.Ya is the beneficiary of Chinese-style affirmative action... Still, Ya is not optimistic.  "All of these privileges are just for effect," he said bitterly. "We still have no power."... just as in the United States, China's affirmative-action policy is controversial, divisive and, some argue, unsuccessful.  It is also, to Western eyes, flawed. That is because the policy is not based on any philosophy of equality, or any desire to "celebrate differences."  Instead, the Chinese people, for the most part, remain completely at ease with racial stereotypes... China's policy is purely pragmatic. The idea is to give the minorities just enough power, education or economic success to keep them quiet. As opposed to empowering minorities, it is meant to encourage assimilation and the creation of a peaceful, unified and essentially Han country. Indeed, treatment of minorities in the popular press, and for example, the creation of a "minority theme park" - a sideshow-like museum in Beijing, where curious Han can have their pictures taken with minorities like Ya - make continued Han chauvinism painfully apparent... China needs those resource-rich border areas and peace within its borders. So Communist Party leaders continue to pressure cadres in minority areas to satisfy minority demands however they can with the hope continued economic development in minority areas will quell any dissatisfaction and ultimately trickle down to fill minorities' pockets, Zhao said.  "The government is so worried," Zhao said. "They know these preferences don't work, but the party has no other option.""

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, If we burn you burn with us - "A little less than halfway through Hong Kong's 50 year transition to full Chinese rule, Hong Kongers can feel China's influence growing day by day. And it's not just about the proposed laws, this year's notorious extradition bill or previous legislation that would have curbed freedom of speech, changed the school curriculum, or the way Hong Kong's parliament is elected. It's also about basic demography. Every day 150 Chinese citizens cross from the mainland to Hong Kong on one way tickets. Every day. That's more than a million people since 1997. And they come speaking a different language. Mandarin Chinese, pretty difficult for Cantonese speaking Hong Kongers to understand. Increasingly, it's being taught in primary schools, fueling a fear among Hong Kongers that their very language is under threat... she resented the fact that her 10 year old son Cyrus has to speak to his teachers in Mandarin. It's just not our mother tongue, dhe said. There are plenty of immigrant kids in Cyrus's class. Even some mainlanders who cross the border every day just to attend school. Laputa [sp?] takes a dim view of her immigrant neighbors. They're noisy, she complains. They don't use the rubbish bins properly, and they've got bad hygiene. Sometimes what you hear sounds distinctly xenophobic. A few years ago, the government was forced to ban so called locust protests directed against immigrants and visitors from the mainland. At the fish market in *something*, Ying, who didn't want to be identified by her full name, told me that in nine years of living in Hong Kong, she's never really felt welcome. Back in the mainland, she said, I worked in the garment industry, I was a boss. Here people regard me as useless. I’m forced to work as a cleaner... If nothing changes, the activists told me bleakly we will become Xinjiang"

Secret Video Offers Rare Look Inside Chinese Labor Program - The New York Times
Strange how "poverty alleviation initiatives" need barbed wire around the compounds and the "residents" are imprisoned inside and unable to see their families
Doubtless a fake video created by the CIA, according to China shills

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, US-China trade war escalates - "Frankly, when we started out with China back during the Nixon administration, the country had no significant geopolitical power or military power compared to the United States. And the goal was that China would liberalize socially and politically, as well as economically if we engaged them. And they did not do that. They took advantage of the trade relationship to build a stronger, more powerful, more authoritarian government. They still execute more people than the rest of the world combined. They've got a million Muslim Uighers locked up in concentration camps and  they’re building nuclear weapons under no strategic arm limitation talks, they're threatening all their neighbors on every border, particularly in the South China Sea region. And we have funded all this. So now, frankly, reducing or eliminating our trade with the Chinese regime creates a more secure world for the United States...
What we've heard so far is the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson repeat the denial that these negotiations broke down because China had reneged on key commitments at the 11th hour reportedly in the hope that Trump was simply after a quick political win. The spokesman said China always honors its words, our position has always been clear. But tellingly, perhaps though, what we haven't heard from China is any alternative explanation for why these negotiations have broken down. And in fact, what I think is really interesting is that domestic coverage has been very, very muted, and clearly very controlled. And of course, the less coverage of any issue there is here in China, the more certain you can be of its sensitivity and its core political importance, and there is no doubt that this whole approach by Trump, essentially rewriting the rules of, you know, 40 years of the world's most important trading relationship, has got Beijing very rattled indeed...
The ideology problem is unresolved. And I think it's every bit as unresolved as it was in the 1930s. And I don't think empowering the dictatorial regimes at that time, in either Japan or Germany turned out to be the best approach. And I don't think it's the best approach today. So I think hanging tough and demanding behavioral change is important. And isn't just about whether they have open free markets or not. This is whether they're, again, putting people into concentration camps, using their military to hack private companies in the West and doing things that are are simply atrocious and unacceptable"

Searching for truth in China's Uighur 're-education' camps - "We were being taken into places that appeared to have been carefully spruced up - with satellite images revealing that much of the security infrastructure had recently been removed.And one by one the people we spoke to inside, some of them visibly nervous, told us similar stories. All of them members of Xinjiang's largest, mainly Muslim ethnic group - the Uighurs - they said they'd been "infected by extremism" and that they'd volunteered to have their "thoughts transformed".This was China's narrative in the mouths of people selected for us, and for whom any cross-examination might pose a serious risk.What might be the consequences if they did let something slip? How could we safely separate the propaganda from the reality? There are plenty of precedents for this kind of reporting dilemma... in the 1930s and 1940s, Germany organised media trips to camps at Sonnenburg and Theresienstadt, designed to demonstrate how "humane" they were. In all such cases, the reporter is witness to a story of vital global importance, but forced to try to tell it with only limited or highly controlled access to those most affected by it. In Xinjiang though, there is one big difference. The authorities grant access not only to show that the conditions inside the facilities are good, they also want to prove that they are not prisons at all... the Chinese officials accompanying us believed wholeheartedly in the narrative on display, some almost moved to tears as they looked on.These people, we were urged to recognise, were reborn. Once dangerously radicalised and full of hatred for the Chinese government, they were now safely back on the road to reform thanks to the timely, benevolent intervention of that same government... in accepting the access, our job was to try to peer beneath the official messaging and hold it up to as much scrutiny as we could.There were the bits of graffiti we filmed, written in Uighur, that we later had translated."Oh my heart don't break," read one. Another in Chinese said simply: "Step by step."... Those in it were "almost criminals," they said, viewed as a threat not because they'd committed a crime, but because they might have the potential to do so.And there was the admission that, once identified as having extremist tendencies, they were given a choice - but not much of one.The option was "of choosing between a judicial hearing or education in the de-extremification facilities"."Most people choose to study," we were told. Little wonder, given the odds of a fair trial.And we know, from other sources, that the definition of extremism is now drawn very widely indeed - having a long beard for example, or simply contacting relatives overseas... there was the cautious questioning that revealed much, not in what they could say, but what they couldn't.I asked one man, who'd been there for eight months already, how many people he'd seen "graduate" in that time.There was a slight pause before he answered. "About that, I have no idea," he said."

China hacked Malaysian, other Asian telcos to spy on Uighur travellers, say sources - "Hackers working for the Chinese government have broken into telecoms networks to track Uighur travellers in Central and Southeast Asia, two intelligence officials and two security consultants who investigated the attacks told Reuters.The hacks are part of a wider cyber-espionage campaign targeting “high-value individuals” such as diplomats and foreign military personnel, the sources said. But China has also prioritised tracking the movements of ethnic Uighurs, a minority mostly Muslim group considered a security threat by Beijing."

China races to destroy records after leaks reveal information on Uighur Muslim detention camps - "A Chinese local government is deleting data and destroying documents after classified papers were leaked offering information on its mass detention camps for Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, according to four people in contact with government employees there.They claimed regional officials in Xinjiang province are also tightening controls on information and have held high-level meetings following the leaks... Another Uighur who had been detained in Xinjiang years before said his ex-wife called him two weeks ago and begged him to send his release papers to her, saying eight officers had come to her home to search for the papers and threatened she would be jailed for life if she could not produce the papers."It's an old matter, and they've know I've been abroad for a long time," he said. "The fact that they suddenly want this now must mean the pressure on them is very high." Some government workers have been rounded up as the state investigates the source of the leaks.  In one case an entire family in civil service was arrested. Abduweli Ayup, a Uighur linguist in exile, said his wife's relatives in Xinjiang - including her parents, siblings, and in-laws - were detained shortly after the leaks were published, claiming they had no relation to the leaks as far as he was aware."
According to China shills who say we should listen to what people living in China (but not in Xinjiang) say (at the same time as ignoring those who are critical of it), we cannot trust what Uighers tell us, even if they have lived in Xinjiang or know many people who do.

Xinjiang, China: Uighur activist Rushan Abbas slams ‘concentration camps’ - "a disturbing policy implemented in the northwest region – a forced-living arrangement between Han Chinese men and Uighur women that’s been likened to “mass rape”. The Government claims it’s designed to promote harmony between the different cultural groups. But activists tell a different story... Han Chinese men had been assigned to monitor the homes of Uighur women whose husbands had been detained in prison camps... As part of the “Pair Up and Become Family” program, Han Chinese men stay with and sleep in the same beds as Uighur women. According to the Chinese Government, the program is designed to “promote ethnic unity”... to Rushan Abbas, a Uighur activist whose family members have been detained in the Xinjiang camps for more than a year, it’s nothing more than systemised rape – part of the Government's brutal ongoing crackdown against the country’s ethnic minority.  “This is mass rape,” she told news.com.au. “The Government is offering money, housing and jobs to Han people to come and marry Uighur people.  “Neither the girls nor their families can reject such a marriage because they will be viewed (by Chinese authorities) as Islamic extremists for not wanting to marry atheist Han Chinese. They have no choice but to marry them.  “(The Han Chinese) have been raping Uighur women in the name of marriage for years. It took more than a year for the media to pick that up.”... Human rights organisations have slammed the program, saying there is “no evidence that families can refuse such visits” and describing it as “deeply invasive forced assimilation practices”... “Normally one or two people sleep in one bed, and if the weather is cold, three people sleep together,” he said, adding “it is now considered normal for females to sleep on the same platform with their paired male ‘relatives’”.  They claimed the “relatives” and their female hosts sleep at least a metre apart at all times and that male Communist Party officials have never tried to take advantage of women... the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar project that seeks to connect countries across continents on trade, with China at its centre.  Geographically, Urumqi – the capital of Xinjiang – is a crucial intersection point in the “Belt” part of the project... The last thing the Chinese Government wants for such a crucial region in this plan is unrest or the loss of control. And that’s where the intense security crackdown comes in.  This explains why the crackdown escalated around five years ago, in line with the Belt and Road Initiative taking off. Ms Abbas has long spoken out against the human rights abuses in Xinjiang – a move that has had disastrous consequences for her family in China.  In September last year, she spoke about the conditions in the camps while seated on a panel hosted by a Washington think tank.  Six days later, her aunt and sister both disappeared at the same time – despite living 1400 kilometres away from each other.  “My sister is a medical doctor. Their ‘vocational training’ shouldn’t apply to her. My aunt is a retired schoolteacher. Both of them went to Chinese school and speak fluent Chinese. They shouldn’t have been targets”"

Her Uighur Parents Were Model Chinese Citizens. It Didn’t Matter. - The New York Times - "The Uighurs’ territory was officially called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, but in reality, the Uighurs existed in a parallel system over which the Han maintained control in both official and unofficial ways. The Xinjiang chairman, the nominal head of the region, was always a Uighur, but the real power rested with the regional party secretary, who for decades was always Han... the state privileged Han for employment, loans and contracts, causing Uighur resentment to simmer, sporadically erupting into larger protests for ethnic rights... She started criticizing the Communist Party at family dinners, but Isaq told her to be quiet. “This government and this Communist Party have helped us a lot,” he told her. “Everything we have, it’s because the government allowed us to have it, so you can’t criticize it.” Humar rolled her eyes. She thought her parents were only saying that because they worked for state media. In the history books she had pored over, she read that in turbulent times, whenever a dynasty fell, another rose. There was a saying: Luan shi chu yingxiong — heroes rise out of chaos... She told Humar they would both have to be careful; they could not express sadness, confusion or anger in front of her party colleagues. If they did, she would be categorized as having minzu qingxu, an emotional attachment to your ethnic group, a mark of political unreliability for a non-Han minority... The party often tested the loyalty of minority members. Communist cadres were not allowed to be religious. During Ramadan, Han officials took their Uighur colleagues out to lunch, and kept a list of those who abstained from eating... On long rides between Hami and Beijing, Humar encountered passengers who, thinking she was also Han, complained about how dirty and uncivilized Uighurs were... She threw herself into the discussion of soqmaq, a traditional dessert that Uighur migrants sell throughout China. It was a notorious scam: Uighur vendors would ask how much a customer wanted and then cut off a much larger piece. Han customers assumed it was cake, but because it was actually nut-filled candy, the total cost of the weighed portion was astronomical. It was hard to argue with the vendors, who would gesture they didn’t understand Mandarin... New dictates from the Communist Party arrived daily concerning what was or wasn’t palatable. Humar categorized comments in a spreadsheet, marking things that might appear innocuous but were actually dog whistles — like references to Zuo Zongtang, a general who reconquered Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty... The government publicized a list of “75 behavioral indications of religious extremism.” Some were as vague as people who “store large amounts of food in their homes,” “those who smoke and drink but quit doing so quite suddenly” or “those who buy or store equipment such as dumbbells . . . without obvious reasons.” Human Rights Watch reported that the government put together a list of 26 “sensitive countries” with supposed connections to terrorism, including Egypt, Thailand and Malaysia. Those who were in contact with relatives in any of those countries came under increased suspicion... life for Zumret as a Uighur in Beijing, where she now lived, was becoming harder and harder. Landlords refused to rent her apartments. She moved six times in three months... In May 2018, a German researcher named Adrian Zenz, after analyzing government procurement and construction notices in over 40 localities, published a paper that showed the scope of the internment network; he estimated that perhaps more than one million people were in “political education” camps, around 10 percent of Xinjiang’s Uighur population.  Most of what is known about what goes on inside the camp system comes from former detainees who have fled China, mostly to Kazakhstan. Very few of them have spoken publicly. In Almaty, I interviewed seven former detainees, who told similar stories"
Of course China shills claim that reports of the camps are fake news because they come from 8 (or something) interviews and are reported by one or two organistions known to be biased. It's easy to deliberately ignore inconvenient facts

'Think of your family': China threatens European citizens over Xinjiang protests - "Two days after Abdujelil Emet sat in the public gallery of Germany’s parliament during a hearing on human rights, he received a phone call from his sister for the first time in three years. But the call from Xinjiang, in western China, was anything but a joyous family chat. It was made at the direction of Chinese security officers, part of a campaign by Beijing to silence criticism of policies that have seen more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities detained in internment camps.Emet’s sister began by praising the Communist party and making claims of a much improved life under its guidance before delivering a shock: his brother had died a year earlier. But Emet, 54, was suspicious from the start; he had never given his family his phone number. Amid the heartbreaking news and sloganeering, he could hear a flurry of whispers in the background, and he demanded to speak to the unknown voice. Moments later the phone was handed to a Chinese official who refused to identify himself.By the end of the conversation, the façade constructed by the Chinese security agent was broken and Emet’s sister wept as she begged him to stop his activism. Then the Chinese official took the phone again with a final warning.“You’re living overseas, but you need to think of your family while you’re running around doing your activism work in Germany,” he said. “You need to think of their safety.” In interviews with more than two dozen Uighurs living across Europe and the United States, tales of threats across the world are the rule, not the exception. Uighurs living in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and France all complained of similar threats against family members back in Xinjiang, and some were asked to spy for China... Beyond discouraging activism, Chinese officials have also tried to recruit Uighurs living abroad to spy on others in their community, asking for photos of private gatherings, names, phone numbers, addresses and licence plate numbers. Some are recruited when they go to Chinese diplomatic missions in Europe to request documents, and others are contacted by security agents over WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging app. Emet’s number is likely to have been leaked to Chinese security agents this way, he said, with his number well known in the Uighur community in Munich.Chinese agents offer cash, the promise of visas to visit Xinjiang or better treatment for family members as a reward, but also dangle the threat of harsh consequences for those same family members if their offers are refused. Uighurs described having crucial documents withheld from Chinese embassies and consulates unless they agreed.One Uighur living in Germany who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said a Chinese agent asked for photos of Eid and other celebrations, and specifically asked for information on Uighurs who had recently arrived in Europe. The recent surge in activism among Uighurs overseas is mostly a direct response to the increasingly repressive policies in Xinjiang... “The biggest mistake European Union countries make is that once they allow China to get away with something, that emboldens Beijing,” he said. “China has systematic strategies in place and the threats to Uighurs in exile show that. Europe needs its own unified strategy to stand up to China and respond to these threats.”"
Of course, China shills claim that Uighers worldwide are part of a cartel conspiring to defame China. And/or that the Western media is making stuff up to defame China

Has Huawei’s Darkest Secret Just Been Exposed By This New Surveillance Report? - "Just a few days after the devastating leak of the so-called China Cables, a cache of documents exposing the truth of the surveillance regime deployed in Xinjiang to suppress the minority Uighur population, tech giant Huawei has become embroiled in the controversy. Huawei’s technology has been linked to Xinjiang before, but the company has always claimed this is only through third-parties, that Huawei itself is not involved. Not so, says a damaging new report, it is much worse than that... At the signing ceremony for the joint laboratory, a Huawei representative said the company "will integrate resources, provide industry-leading products and services, and cooperate extensively with local high-tech enterprises to build a safer and smarter society with the public security department of the autonomous region." That “safer” society, it is claimed, has resulted in somewhere between 900,000 and 1.8 million people being subjected to intrusive monitoring or interred in camps."

China Uighurs: Detained for beards, veils and internet browsing - "A document that appears to give the most powerful insight yet into how China determined the fate of hundreds of thousands of Muslims held in a network of internment camps has been seen by the BBC.Listing the personal details of more than 3,000 individuals from the far western region of Xinjiang, it sets out in intricate detail the most intimate aspects of their daily lives... It is evidence that appears to directly contradict China's claim that the camps are merely schools.In an article analysing and verifying the document, Dr Zenz argues that it also offers a far deeper understanding of the real purpose of the system... Row 598 contains the case of a 38-year-old woman with the first name Helchem, sent to a re-education camp for one main reason: she was known to have worn a veil some years ago.It is just one of a number of cases of arbitrary, retrospective punishment.Others were interned simply for applying for a passport - proof that even the intention to travel abroad is now seen as a sign of radicalisation in Xinjiang... In many cases though, there is little need for advanced technology, with the vast and vague catch-all term "untrustworthy" appearing multiple times in the document.It is listed as the sole reason for the internment of a total of 88 individuals.The concept, Dr Zenz argues, is proof that the system is designed not for those who have committed a crime, but for an entire demographic viewed as potentially suspicious... many of the cases in the Karakax List give multiple reasons for internment; various combinations of religion, passport, family, contacts overseas or simply being untrustworthy.The most frequently listed is for violating China's strict family planning laws.In the eyes of the Chinese authorities it seems, having too many children is the clearest sign that Uighurs put their loyalty to culture and tradition above obedience to the secular state... Like all Uighurs living overseas, Ms Abdulaheb lost contact with her family in Xinjiang when the internment campaign began, and she's been unable to contact them since... More than two dozen individuals are listed as "recommended" for release into "industrial park employment" - career "advice" that they may have little choice but to obey. There are well documented concerns that China is now building a system of coerced labour as the next phase of its plan to align Uighur life with its own vision of a modern society. "
The CIA must have a huge budget to be able to forge so many things!